Member Info for adoubleuk

BNB,

"Weather is good from wed next week"

Well it's shite in Niort right now. Had a hailstorm a couple of hours ago...

Hi,

You asked me a question over on the HUR board, but it relates to RBD, so I've come here to answer.

Your message was:

"Apologies all, but I would like to ask ADUK a question on an unreletated topic.

ADUK, what would happen to, let’s say for arguments sake, RBD’s share price, for example, if the Coulter well wasn’t going to be wireline logged ?

Nothing duplicitous you understand, just a random question, so as to edify myself, IMHO."

OK, just thought about it a bit., because it intrigues me a lot!

Firstly, your question is in various parts, so I'll answer the first a bit quickly. You ask me what would happen to the SP if the well wasn't wireline logged. And the answer is, I don't know! Because I'm not an SP predictor! AIM O&G shares seem to have a mind of their own, sometimes, working in reverse to news of 'success' !

But let's get down to the technical nitty-gritty, a place where I'm a lot happier, and can express myself with confidence.

We have 'Colter South', on the 'wrong' side of the fault, but RNS'd as a discovery, albeit just icing on the cake, and not the original target. Myself, I was a bit surprised to see that (so far as we know), wireline logs were not then subsequently run before going for sidetrack, but that the news was announced based purely on LWD (Logging While Drilling) data. Wireline would have given far more in-depth analysis, with MDT logs and sidewall cores...

But I can imagine good reasons why wireline wasn't run. The most important being that it's EXPENSIVE. And so is plugging back, and sidetracking. Let's face it, this operation isn't being financed by people with bottomless pockets, like Shell, for instance. And nice as 'Colter South' might be, the fact of having remained on the 'wrong side' has added to the bill.

I don't know the well 'architecture', so don't know from what depth the sidetrack will take place to hit 'Colter North'. But it'll probably have to be high, in order to run 'normal' wireline logs without too great a hole-angle. Otherwise such (absolutely neccessary) logs will have to be run using TLC. Which is time-consuming, tricky, and even more expensive.

(Btw, 'TLC' is one of those rather quaint oilfield acronyms coined by Schlumberger, standing for 'Tough Logging Conditions! Essentially it involves conveying wireline logging tools on the end of drillpipe if the hole angle is greater than about 50 degrees, where gravity won't exert enough 'pull' to ensure the instruments will get to where they're supposed to on wireline alone.)

One thing is sure. The target, 'Colter North', WILL be logged, whether it requires TLC or not. Because an unlogged hole is worthless, and just a hole in the ground. LWD can tell you a lot, but without sampling, you don't really know much.

And that having been said, there are now some LWD tools which can perform some of the 'sampling' tasks which earlier could only be done on wireline...

I guess this only goes halfway to answering your qu

HeidHoncho,

"Apologies all, but I would like to ask ADUK a question on an unreletated topic.ADUK, what would happen to, let’s say for arguments sake, RBD’s share price, for example, if the Coulter well wasn’t going to be wireline logged ? Nothing duplicitous you understand, just a random question, so as to edify myself, IMHO."

I'll reply over on the RBD board, though I know a number of people in HUR are also in RBD. Gimme five minutes...
.

BNB,

" I know a load of people that actually work west of the Shetland and looking and predicting the weather nearly 2 weeks ahead is laughable "

Post of the week! Go tell 'em, man!

(Addition to last post)

Wellwell,

Your phrase " Worst case scenario it’s a duster and they use the tree elsewhere" is disingenious, and not at all what I had in mind.

If you thing 'drilling a duster' (which I don't personally think will happen) is 'worst case', then I give up. I think you have to look at your risk-assessment seminar notes again. Remember Challenger.

Wellwell,

" Worst case scenario it’s a duster and they use the tree elsewhere. Not having one helps the cause not one iota."

Yes, (and you might be surprised by this), I agree with you. Because the Xmas trees involved are generic for the specific application in mind, ie Hurricane's 'production' wells, which are now becoming generic in themselves.

But that such Capex (if it has happened) has not been RNS'd by either HUR or Spirit still makes me apply salt to what CA has published.

scoredagainsteps,

" Off topic any one have a drone here wonderfull things what i seen"

The market's closed, so maybe some O/T will be permitted.

I don't own a drone personally, but have been in situations where they have been in professional use. One I remember being a wellsite in Poland: the 'pilot' had built it himself, and it was large: about a metre across I don't know how much it cost, but the video results were impressive.

More recently (backside of last year) I was doing my trackside photography thing at a truckrace, and the organisers had also hired the services of a drone 'pilot' to take publicity video, and naturally we fell into conversation. His drone was smaller than the one I'd previously seen, and off-the-shelf. Cost about 3500 euros. To which was added the cost of the camera slung underneath, a Nikon 'bridge' - style reflex, relatively light, but able to take video as well with a big-capacity memory card. Mounted on a fully-controllable gimbal setup. All-in, about 5000 euros of kit, plus a couple of hundred which the young man had spent on training courses learning how to use it to the full.

I was extremely impressed with what the machine was capable of, and it made me feel old. There I was with six and a half kilos of still-photography kit slung on my shoulders (I have backache after those weekends!) and here was this guy taking high-quality footage from angles I couldn't get, of course. With equipment costing less than half as much as mine would if bought new. (My stuff is old and battered, with many battle-scars, and I doubt if I could sell it on ebay for 5000 now! If I wanted to. Which I don't.)

The 'pilot' had set himself up as a self-run one-man business about 18 months previously. Specialising in two things. Sporting events, and surveys of high historical buildings, such as churches, which previously would have required people doing rope-access and so on. And not only had he found that in the region he'd tapped a relatively open market, but was making a good living from it, and generally having great fun doing so. No one assignment being like the next, which is something I can relate to! Just like the oilfield.

As I say, it made me feel old. But if Hurricane comes good, I might consider branching out and buying one of those things myself!

Biffa,

Quite agree with your post wrt LLI's for Lincoln tie-in. And if CA's report comiler can mistake Warwick for Lincoln, there's no reason why a 'mistake' might not be made over whether LLI's have been ordered, or will be, soon. Probably. It simply makes no sense ordering things like a subsea tree and flowlines before the well's been drilled and tested. Plus also in the past, Hurricane has informed us via RNS when such orders were made, because it's Capex, after all. Even if this time it'll be Spirit signing the cheque.

That's why I found that bit of CA's report curious. But CA will be CA, and it's a reason I don't particularly like Mr Bernstein, even if I've never met him. His company made eleven million from trading Hurricane shares last year, a company which RB was openly criticising in the press just some months previously. Proverbs about biting the hand providing the food spring to mind...

And yes, any eventual tieback to the EPS will be Lincoln. Warwick is too far away.

...In fact, (thinking aloud and transcribing it here), on reflection I find the bit about the long lead items for tie-in of the upcoming Lincoln well to the FPSO rather odd. Because the well hasn't even been drilled yet, let alone a DST performed on it. IF those items have been ordered, it sounds a bit like putting the cart before the horse, making some assumptions, and taking rather a lot for granted.

I wonder if CA's statement is in fact correct? I take it with a pinch of salt for now.

Wellwell (et al),

Having cleared up that detail, and now myself having read the Hurricane section of CA's half-year financials, I agree that whoever compiled them should have written Lincoln rather than Warwick, as it refers to the well drilled in 2016. However there are another two little things there which also caught my eye.

At one point it reads:

"We believe that the deal with Spirit is transformational for Hurricane."

Ah, that word 'transformational' ! A buzz-word beloved by share pundits and BoD's trying to polish their halos. It should be noted, however, that it's not a word that occurs in the September RNS issued by Hurricane announcing the 'Spirit deal'. Maybe they believe in a bit of modesty.

Rather more importantly, though, there's another bit saying

" Long lead items have been ordered so that in 2020 one of those wells will be tied back to the FPSO for production appraisal. "

That's interesting. A little snippet of news we weren't aware of. Sure, the 'Spirit deal RNS' mentions that part of the Phase 1 funding by Spirit would be used to this purpose, in addition to hiring the rig and for the upcoming drilling campaign, but to date Hurricane hasn't let slip the fact that these long lead items have actually been ordered. However CA's paper appears to say unequivocally that they have. Always good to know...

Wellwell,

I suggest you look closer at that asset map on the HUR website. Yes, Lincoln extends into P2294, but that's it. Plus a few days ago, another poster mistakenly thought that an 'historic well' had been drilled on Warwick having looked at that 'asset map', which is confusing, to say the least. The fact is that not a single well has yet been drilled on that block.

Mr Wilks,

"In one post you said blue water are definitely calling the shots and in another post you say you don't know who's calling the shots. Take enough stabs and you will eventually be right.
Also regards my earlier post I don't see how they make me a back seat driver."

I was not singling you out as a 'backseat driver', and that was not my intention. Apologies if it seemed like that.

As regards calling the shots, I am sure that it is BW, at least to the extent of physically going for hookup. However, I'm in two minds as to where the instruction to mobilise from the Firth came from, before the decision was made (probably by the skipper) to turn around.

Wellwell,

"It should have read Lincoln I think even although Lincoln and Warwick are believed to be a single accumulation and come under the same licence."

True about the belief of Lincoln and Warwick being contiguous. Untrue about the licences. Warwick is in licence block P2294, whereas Lincoln is in P1368 South.

MrWilks,

"What would this bb be saying if the A.M. had not sailed and the weather had dramatically changed for the better?"

This BB would probably be saying the rope hadn't arrived!

In fact, I think the term BB should be modified to the acronym BSDB, standing for BackSeatDriver'sBoard. Lots of new people saying what should be happening instead of just observing what's going on and trying to interpret it. Maybe with the bad weather forecast for the upcoming week, the BoD could take a holiday and just come back when they get the word from LSE that they should do so, based on the number of posts here.

Wrt the sweepstake (from a couple of days ago). Reverandy informed us

" just 4 horses left in the running.

AdoubleUK: 31st March 2019 - Mendip Cave Rescue Organisation.
NorthCBubble: April 1st 2019 - Yorkshire air ambulance
ChiselHurst 18th April 2019 - RNLI
Soolsker: 18th May 2019 - RNLI"

I'm beginning to fear my muddy underground friends aren't going to be receiving a dollop of donations as well, unfortunately. Nevertheless, just like a poker tournament, it's nice to make the final table, even if one isn't the outright winner. And RNLI is a very worthy cause to which I already contribute, anyway.

I find it curiously interesting that the four charities still left in the running share a common ground: that being, the less work they have to do, the better things are going!

johnpwh,

"It appears that I have invested in an Oil Company whose ship uses more oil than it has ever produced"

Welcome to the oilpatch! However, no skin off our nose, other than the frustration and so on. It's 'lump sum'. Bluewater's accounting dept must be pulling their hair out, but that's their problem, not ours. I was once involved in a rigmove in the Gabonese jungle which took six weeks instead of two. Getting the mudpump which had fallen (upside down) out of the 3-metre ditch it had fallen into (along with the lowboy trailer) was an epic, involving three D9's and a 50-ton crane!

This is just a 'hiccup' in comparison.

PS That pump (an Ensco 1300) was never the same again, and required total overhall a couple of months later, causing further downtime.

Cebo,

"The way I see this is that Bluewater, who will undoubtably be calling the shots decided that there was a good enough chance that there was a weather window that would allow them to safely hook up and as such decided to crew up and head out there in case that was the case - it never developed so they rightly called it off and headed back to the Cromarty. "

On reflection, yes, I think you're right. It's easy to forget, but this is still the 'Bluewater Show', and it's they who are (presumably) paying for the fuel costs, anchorage charges, and so on.

Quite an interesting situation, really. I hope BW's beancounting division isn't making the crew feel pressured into grasping at straws, though.

We can wait.

fitguy5,

"Do you think that the anchor laying operations might have been a bit tad too close to AM manouverings for hook up that caused the U turn, not just an iffy forecast!?"

No. Out of the question. 8 km distant.

Wessex,

"The Havila J & V are nothing to do with the hookup. They're making their way to Warwick, to prelay moorings for Spirit Energy's first rig."

Have at you! Somehow your post got eleven 'tickups', and though it was correct in substance, some of it was quite wrong.

What's with this 'Spirit Energy's first rig' bulls*it ? The Lincoln appraisal and the two Warwick wells are being operated by Hurricane via Petrofac just like everything previously done. They're OUR wells, goddamit, even if Spirit is bankrolling the show.

Heck, at this rate I'm going to have to come across to Wiltshire (hoping not to break a gearbox this time) so we can argue about this over a pint or five. (Same pub, 'cos that was brilliant!)

JohnPearson,

" what was refreshing was that even though there was a good start from 8am even throughout the day momentum began to take hold"

Agree with you there! It shows that this share is still very much operationally news-driven. (Or 'shipwatching-driven'!)